living body. The executioner wept as he turned him from the ladder, and the last sounds which reached the ears of Montrose,36 were those of regret and pity, which the sight of his death occasioned amidst the surrounding multitude.37

CHAPTER XII.

CHARLES II.'S RESIDENCE IN SCOTLAND.

Subjected thus,

How can you say to me I am a king?

King Richard the Second.

WHEN Charles was informed of the execution of Montrose, and was at the same time made aware that the catastrophe had been hurried purely that he might have no opportunity of remonstrating, he is said to have felt no little grief for the loss of so faithful and gallant an adherent, and quite as much indignation at the cruelty which dictated the deed. Being, however, told by the more moderate party of the Scottish Presbyterians, that his friend had been sacrificed chiefly as a means of conciliating the wilder party to his restoration, and it being hinted to him that he had best say nothing about an affair in which he had conducted himself with some share of duplicity, he was obliged to sit quietly down with the af

front.

This youthful prince now also found it necessary to close the negotiation with the Scottish commissioners, which Montrose's enterprise had for a little time interrupted. He set sail for Scotland, upon the hard terms already specified, within a few days after he had heard of Montrose's death.

8

The Whig historians have hitherto, almost without_contradiction, represented Charles's conduct in this unnatural alliance as altogether selfish and treacherous. That a prince, who was already a secret Catholic, and who entertained arbitrary notions of government, should have assumed the guise of character, and signed the bonds, required of him by the Scottish Presbyterians, appears to the conceptions of those writers an act of excessive atrocity, as regards his character both as a sovereign and as a man. Yet, without laying any stress upon the necessity of the times, which justifies all political actions whatever, it would not perhaps be difficult to show, that his conduct was quite consistent with the ordinary morality of princes and rulers. It cannot, at least, be disputed that the views of his Scottish subjects, and consequently their whole conduct, were quite as self-seeking and uncandid as his own. The dominant party in Scotland would never have attempted to restore him, would never have troubled themselves with him at all, if they had not seen that he was a weapon which could be used with effect against the English sectaries, or had it not been at least their opinion that it was better for them to take him, with a promise to protect and extend their system of faith, than to submit to Cromwell, who was sure to exterminate it, root and branch. Thus, allowing that Charles had no end in view but the selfish one of restoring himself by means of the Covenanters, what is there, after all, so base in his conduct? The whole case was simply a league betwixt two powers of opposite natures, entered into for mutual convenience, and where each, as a matter of course, made concessions to the other. Nor can Charles

be justly charged with afterwards deserting the cause of the Covenant. He maintained it so long as it could maintain him; which was virtually the end of the treaty. If he subsequently entered into different relations, and even found it necessary to proscribe the very bond which he had signed, he did nothing more than merely bow to a demand of the time which it must have been fatal for him to resist.

Accompanied by the Dukes of Buckingham and Hamilton, the Earls of Cleveland, Brainford, Dunfermline, Lauderdale, and Carnwath, the Lords Wentworth, Widdrington, Wilmot, and Sinclair, and by various other English and Scottish cavaliers, Charles set sail for Scotland on the 3d of June. His little fleet was under great danger, during the voyage, from the ships of the English Commonwealth, which had orders to seize him if possible, and carry him prisoner to London. But he fortunately escaped every peril, and got safe into the mouth of the river Spey, after a voyage of about twenty days. He landed at the little village of Garmouth, within the embouchure of the Spey, on the 23d of June, but not till he had previously, on ship-board, signed the Covenant, and made solemn professions to the Scottish commissioners and clergy who accompanied him, of his intention to prosecute the ends of that sacred bond.

As it was now in some measure become the policy of the Presbyterian government to encourage a loyal sentiment in the bosoms of the people, the intelligence of the safe arrival of the king in Scotland was everywhere received with both public and private expressions of joy. The news reached Edinburgh late in the evening of the 26th

of June; and immediately, by order of the parliament, which was sitting at the moment, the guns of the castle were fired, bonfires were lighted, trumpets sounded, and bells rung; while orders were sent off to all parts of the kingdom to observe similar ceremonies. The people, finding their own humble feelings of loyalty thus countenanced, chanted songs of rejoicing through the streets of the city all night; "and next morning," says the simple annalist, Andrew Nichol, "the pure [quasi dicitur poor kaill-wyves at the Trone war sae overjoyed, that they sacrificed their standis and creillis, yea the verie stoollis they sat on, in ane fyre."

Yet, as there was great danger that the presence of royalty might encourage the fatal error of malignity, and tend to give the king too much power, it was soon found necessary to alter this policy. On the city of Aberdeen, for instance, having presented fifteen hundred pounds to the king, the parliament sent an injunction to prevent the other burghs through which he had to pass, on his way to the south, from doing any thing of the same sort. For the same purpose, at St Andrews, one of their chief men among the clergy, Mr Samuel Rutherford, told his majesty, in an oration, that if he did not act in strict conformity to the moderate system of government laid down in the Covenant, "actum est de Rege, et re regia"-it was all over with him and his affairs.2

They soon gave him still more unequivocal hints of their intention to restrain him. Instead of bringing him to Edinburgh, where his presence might have had an effect upon the army and upon a large body of the people, they condemned him to be secluded in the palace of Falkland in Fife; a situa